Just a heads up, Cassidy-Collins is still percolating in the background of health policy. And it has the chance of being a winner on purely Republican terms as it forces the issue out of DC and makes health policy the problem of the governors. Do not be surprised if this keeps on showing up again and again.
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Major Major Major Major
In the Simpson-Bowles sense, or as something more likely to be enacted?
Corner Stone
So it should be fought tooth and nail, amirite?
Chris
Yeah, I was a little worried that the total collapse of AHCA wouldn’t be the end of the story.
Villago Delenda Est
“We’re not going to clean up our mess, we’re going to outsource it” – the GOP
The Moar You Know
@Chris: How could it be? THE BLACK MAN MUST BE TAUGHT HIS LESSON.
More important than outlawing abortion, even.
rikyrah
I’ll say it again:
I don’t trust Collins.
44 bent over backwards, getting her ‘input’ during the negotiations of Obamacare…
and that traitor STILL voted against it.
and, we’re supposed to trust her?
PHUCK.OUTTA.HERE.
David Anderson
@Major Major Major Major: I’m not sure
David Anderson
@rikyrah: Remember, we only get a major say if there are significant elements of the Republican coalition who defect. Trust means almost nothing here. The relevant question is what is the next best alternative.
Doug R
@rikyrah: I’m with you on this. Collins is a Playa, and I don’t trust her again.
p.a.
@Chris: @The Moar You Know:
It’s never the end. They’re still going after Social fucking Security after, what, 4 generations.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: Thanks. I have been a like broken record about Collins. Let the Republicans own it if they want to break it. Democrats should provide zero cover for their destruction.
Shirt
California will go single payer then. The rest of the nation will wonder why they can’t do it and what is wrong with the feds anyway.
Yarrow
I missed your earlier piece on this. It sounds like ultimately it would wreck Medicare, since that’s federal. Is this an argument to use against it?
rikyrah
@David Anderson:
We agree to disagree.
Collins is a phucking fraud.
Plain and simple.
Rafael Cruz, while loathesome and odious….is not a fraud. He is the scum that is presented to us.
Collins bullshyts that she’s some phucking moderate, all the while votes 99 out of 100 times with the turtle.
PHUCKING F-R-A-U-D.
It really is a non-starter for me.
There should be NO Democratic help. Let them destroy it – all by themselves.
It’s been 7 years, and she STILL won’t say healthcare is a right. Cassidy will at least say that.
F-R-A-U-D
TenguPhule
@David Anderson:
What do you mean almost?
Yarrow
@schrodingers_cat: Yes. This. No bargaining and agreements with traitors and terrorists. Republicans are both. Let them own anything they’re doing.
Hunter Gathers
Why offer your drowning enemy a life preserver when they deserve a fucking anvil?
Cassidy and Collins are trolling you.
? Martin
@Shirt: Yeah, I think if California can keep the federal funding and put it into single payer, we would probably do that. Given that the state is putting in $50B in state money on top of what the feds are doing, and given that the state could take what businesses are currently putting into healthcare and probably get better outcomes for those same dollars, I think the math might just work out.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I don’t trust her either, but I think you’re giving her too much credit. I think she’s weak, and even dumber than she is weak.
I wonder how many Republicans in the Senate would oppose K-C. I’d bet on Cruz and Paul. Trying to think of who either wants to run for president as a severe conservative (Cotton) and who might face a trump and/or tea party primary challenge (Rubio…. Collins herself?). And could it pass the House? I kind of doubt it.
efgoldman
But: It is filibusterable. I don’t think they get eight Dem votes to break a legislative filibuster on anything of that sort the RWNJs want to pass.
Frank Wilhoit
We now face the same problem that the European Union faces in trying to maintain uniform standards — most challengingly, a single currency — across sovereign entities with widely differing capabilities and perspectives. Republicans want to devolve things to the states so that the Red states can be “free” to sabotage themselves and so that the national Republican Party can use the remaining powers of the Federal Government to sabotage the Blue states. We have a currency union without political union, which is the intractable structural problem with the EU that was so thoroughly hashed over in the context of the Greek financial crises a couple of years ago.
But it is worse than that, because there are no Blue states, only Blue cities (and therefore counties). What it shows up is the original sin of the founding of America: the deliberately dishonest pretense that urban and rural civilizations can be governed under the same laws.
Anonymous At Work
David,
Do Republican Governors want this? I mean, it puts everything on them to sink-or-swim and all it takes is a few liberal states running successful programs to show them up. I get why Congressional Republicans would want the same thing, for the same reason, but wouldn’t objections by Governors sink it?
TenguPhule
@Frank Wilhoit:
Hawaii would like to kindly disagree with you there.
Cermet
@TenguPhule: So would Maryland
Steve in the ATL
@Frank Wilhoit:
That is a rather large problem. Any thoughts on how to resolve it? Beyond breaking up the union or letting the racist rubes continue to fuck over the more enlightened among us?
TenguPhule
@Cermet: Yes, but we have better beaches then you.
Chet Murthy
@Steve in the ATL: Actually, breaking up the union won’t do it either, since cities aren’t geographically compact enough to allow a breakup, eh?
Barbara
@Frank Wilhoit:
This is a ridiculous statement. On the East Coast, New England with the possible exception of Maine is blue. As are New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and, increasingly, Virginia. Are there red counties therein? Of course. But these states are blue or seriously trending that way. Even Republican governors have a hard time acting like hard core Republicans in these states. On the West Coast, Oregon, Washington, Hawaii and, uhhh, what’s that other state, you know, the big one with the bear on its flag? Oh yeah, California. New Mexico and Nevada are mostly blue, Colorado is going in that direction, and Illinois, the financial basket case in the middle, is reliably blue. Not counties, whole states when measured by the weight of political trends. The problem we have is a static framework that has created out of some states what the English referred to as rotten boroughs. It will prove nearly impossible to fix because Wyoming and North Dakota (to name two) are so busy smoking the crack pipe of federal dollars that they don’t have to face the reality of how they plan to get to their home home on the range when the federal government can’t be bothered to raise enough money to pay for their roads anymore.
LesGS
@TenguPhule: California has some pretty nice beaches, too. And more Blue counties than Red. So contra Frank Wilhoit, I think we qualify as a Blue state, even counting counties instead of overall population.
Barbara
@Steve in the ATL: This is yet another mostly inaccurate statement. “Deliberately dishonest” divide between rural and urban? When the country was founded the majority of people lived outside of cities and this was true for more than 100 years thereafter, indeed, only became not true quite recently — maybe the last 70 years. There was no deliberate dishonesty. Things changed. They didn’t know that a huge percentage of people would gravitate to fewer than 10 states. If you add up Texas, New York, Florida and California you account for nearly one-third of the U.S. population. No one had that kind of foresight.
laura
@rikyrah: right on the money Rikyrah. Pushing health care down to the states is the easiest way to kill the ACA. Unlike the federal government, states must balance a budget every year, with exceptions for states with republican governors who cant/won’t approve a budget (see Kansas or Illinois for details). Many states do not generate enough revenue to fund even the most basic.of services. Many states are conned with cutting taxes for the already wealthy so that providing access to insurance, let alone care is going to be left up to the tender mercies of the states, far too many of which are governed by republicans.
Cassidy Collins is the way to the end of health care for many millions.
Feature, not bug.
Steve in the ATL
@Barbara: I concur. So how do the populous and economically successful states convince, or force, the sparsely populated moocher states to give up political power?
Roger Moore
@Frank Wilhoit:
Nonsense. The whole idea of a federal system like ours that devolves significant decision-making power to state and local governments is that it allowed different areas to be governed by different sets of laws. If there’s a problem with legal uniformity, it’s the exact opposite. Changes in transportation and the importance of inter-state problems like pollution have made it increasingly necessary to have a uniform set of laws, while our constitution is designed to be more decentralized.
The bigger problem, though, isn’t urban vs. rural per se or even urban vs. suburban (since genuinely rural areas have marginal political power). The problem is we got our current urban vs. suburban divide as a result of white flight, so that the cities are disproportionately full of minorities and whites who are OK living around minorities, while the suburbs are disproportionately full of racist whites. That has massively exacerbated the political divide between cities and suburbs, and at exactly the time when we need solutions that apply at the national level.
Suzanne
@Frank Wilhoit: Cities are better for people and for the natural environment. Rural areas should be used for resource production and sustaining the small population needed for that task and not much else. As such, we should financially encourage people to move to cities and stop giving disproportionate electoral weight to people in rural areas.
Sorry not sorry that Cletus can’t be a fifth-generation coal miner.
Barbara
@rikyrah: Collins is the most dishonest member of the Senate. If lying were an Olympic sport, Collins would be the Simone Biles of competitive duplicity — so far ahead of the crowd that no one else even dreams of anything but silver.
More seriously, in case no one has been paying attention, Paul Ryan said that he would rather take his toys and go home than play with Democrats. He is not going to pull the same kind of maneuver that Boehner did to fund emergency relief for Hurricane Sandy. For one thing, he can’t append his tax cut to a measure that doesn’t actually gut health care spending to the bone.
Barbara
@Steve in the ATL: When I figure it out you will be the first to know. In more depressing terms, I think that we are looking at longer term realignment that picks off more coastal and urban states over time. Not good for the faint of heart or those perpetually in a rush.
KG
@? Martin:
Here’s my one worry about going to single payer… there are a lot of people that work for health insurance companies. Are they all going to suddenly be out of a job?
Goku
@Barbara:
At the risk of sounding stupid: is that bad?
MomSense
@rikyrah:
I’ll start by saying I don’t trust Collins either but she served in the Senate HELP committee (Ted Kennedy’s committee) and that version of the bill was the best and first out of the gate. It was Snowe that Obama spent time negotiating with because she was a very influential member of the Senate Finance committee and that was the committee where all the action was because they were focusing on the finances. She actually did vote for the version of the bill that passed her committee and she worked on Baucus even trying to keep a version of the public option alive. We got from her what we needed. Collins really wasn’t a big part of the negotiations on ACA.
Collins is infuriating and horrible and has burned us many, many times. That having been said, my interest is in calling their bluff on the death spiral horse shit by getting out in front with what they could do to bolster the exchanges.
efgoldman
@Barbara:
When Florida is 1/3 under water and loses five or ten congresscritters….
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@MomSense: nothing infuriated me more than Snowe, after helping make the mess out of sheer cowardice, walking away from it blaming “both sides”. There were so many moments in the Bush/Obama years where she could have done some real good by pulling a Jeffords or even just going independent.
Somebody told me she hates Democrats because the Maine state party got very personal about her family in one of her early campaigns.